pam_fprint is replaced by fprintd’s pam_fprintd module, which splits the PAM conversation from hardware access.

Those are either obsolete, or not related to the fprint project. While looking for information about fingerprint reader support in Linux and other free OSes, you might find references to the following software. It also includes a PAM module to implement user login ( pam_fprintd replacing the obsolete pam_fprint module), and small command-line utilities if your desktop environment does not integrate support. This is the software developers will want to integrate with to add fingerprint authentication to OSes, desktop environments and applications. Libfprint is of prime interest to developers wishing to add support for specific fingerprinting hardware.įprintd is a daemon that provides fingerprint scanning functionality over D-Bus. If you’re a user, you probably aren’t interested in libfprint, instead you want to find some software which uses libfprint (see Integration section above). libfprint is the component which does the dirty work of talking to fingerprint reading devices, and processing fingerprint data. The OpenBSD operating system also has login integration through login_fingerprint. Most Linux distributions support fingerprint login through fprintd. The GNOME desktop supports fingerprint management through its Users Settings panel.

The software is free software and in the long term we’re shooting for adoption by distributions, integration into common desktop environments, etc.īoth libfprint and fprintd’s source code is available through git, as well as released archives, reachable through their respective GitLab pages. We’re trying to change that by providing a central system to support all the fingerprint readers we can get our hands on. For more information on where we came from, see the project history page.

Previously, Linux support for such devices has been scattered amongst different projects (many incomplete) and inconsistent in that application developers would have to implement support for each type of fingerprint reader separately. The fprint project aims to add support for consumer fingerprint reader devices, in Linux, as well as other free Unices.

Linux fingerprint reader